THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, February 8, 1996 TAG: 9602080377
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: CHARLISE LYLES
LENGTH: Medium: 67 lines
Cracking on former President Ronald Wilson Reagan. Never a problem.
Even when he was shot in 1981, my college pals and I, though sorry for him, managed a few digs: Surely his recovery would be driven by a desire to inflict Reaganomics on the nation.
But the other night, as his face flashed across TV, there was no chuckling.
The occasion, Feb. 6, was the two-term president's 85th birthday. Reagan appeared as dashing as ever: bow tie, tails and that lick of black hair shining like the ``Teflon man's'' own political luck. And, of course, that crooked grin.
Apparently, it was a video taken awhile back.
There were no serious signs of that peculiarly absent look that Alzheimer's disease smacks across the faces of its victims.
It is the same on every face, black, yellow, white, male, female, preacher, president, teacher.
My uncle, Herbert Lyles, was a teacher before Alzheimer's came along and slapped that blank look on his face.
As a child, I sometimes wished that Uncle Herbert had been my father instead of Charles Lyles. A grade school teacher, Uncle Herbert was upstanding, respectable. He had done something with his life.
Alzheimer's, which degenerates brain cells and ultimately leads to crippling dementia, struck just as he was concluding 20 years or so of teaching in Cleveland's public schools.
Evil and silent. It sneaked up on him. A stove burner left on all night. Keys left in the door. Home address forgotten. Name?
The disease erased nearly every function, mental and physical, even his big, jolly James Earle Jones smile. Finally, it curled my long, slender-limbed uncle into a fetal, mummy-like creature, fists balled like knotted rope.
I felt stupid sending Father's Day and birthday cards to the nursing home where he lived out the last years of his life. I sent them anyway.
Maybe a nurse would read the verse, and the words, ``Your niece, Charlise,'' would evoke a grunt of recognition from Uncle Herbert.
On my last visit, he seemed to respond only to the heat of another human being standing near. He seemed to grunt appreciation for the vanilla ice cream his wife spoon-fed him.
``He likes ice cream,'' she said, smiling, desperate to believe that somehow, some way he was aware of our presence, aware of the T-shirt on his back, the window in his room, the wheelchair that carted his body, just a sack of bones.
Uncle Herbert died two weeks ago.
Those theories that say Alzheimer's is hereditary bother me a lot.
You know, when you can't remember a telephone number that you dial all the time. Or you forget what you were just about to say. (Of course, in some cases this can work to your advantage.) Or that momentary fright you feel, standing in a parking lot, unable to remember where you parked.
You laugh it off. . . . Age.
So it is hard to crack jokes on Ronald Reagan now, though I still loathe his legacy of supply-side economics (high budget deficits), the 1983 invasion of Grenada, his Iran-Contra weapons-peddling and hostage deal.
Reagan and four million other Americans, according to the Chicago-based Alzheimer's Association, are not laughing it off.
For them and the 19 million people who have a family member with the disease, the forgetting is forever. And so is the fright. by CNB